Johnson's Presidency
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1. Why was
Johnson impeached?
2. How did
Republicans govern the South?
3. What was a
scalawag and a carpetbagger?
4. How did the
KKK terrorize black southerners?
5. How did
education and churches benefit African-Americans?
6. How did the
lack of land ownership harm freedmen?
1. The
impeachment of President Johnson was a political act by the Republicans of
Congress to protect the Radical Republicans in his cabinet. Law was passed that
the President could not dismiss a federal official or military commander
without the consent of the Senate, but Johnson went on and did so in removing
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton who was in charge of military governments in the
South. This action by Johnson led the House to impeach him for committing 11
“high crimes and misdemeanors.”
2. Under the
governing of the Republicans, the South was under military protection of the
U.S. Army until Congress was satisfied that a state reached its Reconstruction
requirements. This control of the South by the Republicans lasted from one year
to nine years. Republican legislation in the ex-Confederate states were
native-born white southerners, freemen, and arrived northerners. Whites were in
majority in both houses of the legislature in most of the states, South
Carolina being the exception. The Republicans pushed for a number of measures
to assist the freedmen and help them bring slavery to an end.
3. The Democratic
opponents, which hated the Republicans called the southern Republicans
“scalawags” and the northern newcomers “carpetbaggers.”
4. The Ku Klux
Klan, founded in 1867 by ex-Confederate general, Nathaniel Bedford Forrest was
a secret society intended to intimidate blacks and white reformers. This
“invisible empire” burned down buildings owned by blacks, and flogged and
murdered freedmen to prevent them from exercising their right to vote.
5. African-Americans
benefitted from churches because the priests and ministers became leading
figures in the black community – the establishment of the Negro Baptist and
African Methodist Episcopal allowed hundreds of thousands of independent blacks
to leave the white-dominated churches. Through the escape of attending white
churches, the black community was able to further their aims and achieve more
as a group. Education also allowed African Americans to become teachers and
train ministers. By creating independent schools, children of blacks were able
to enter academic studies and progress in literature than ever done before.
6. The inability
for freedmen to rarely acquire land of their own, meant that they had to work
on the lands of others. Sharecropping as it was known, kept these freed
bondspeople dependent on their landowners or in debt to local merchants. These
freedmen also had to give a share of their harvests to the lands’ owner which
was usually half. Often times, these freedmen entered debt though borrowing
money and rent.
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